William Johnstone - Eyes of Eagles

Sam and Sarah were amused at the boy’s antics.

“I think he’s in love,” Sarah said.

“Oh, honey, they’re just kids,” Sam replied.

“So were we, remember?” she reminded him.

“You’re right. As usual.”

Hannah and Swede joined the young couple. They too had noticed Jamie and Kate.

“It’s about time Jamie had some fun,” Hannah said. “God knows he’s lost most of his childhood.”

The four of them stood apart from the laughing and gossiping crowd that spilled from the front to both sides of the yard. The Jackons and the Olm-steads were not in attendance, and the general consensus among everybody there was relief.

“Is Jamie really just eleven years old?” Sarah asked.

“Twelve, I believe. But he could easily pass for someone much older. He hadn’t been at the Shawnee town five minutes before he whipped Tall Bull’s son, Little Wolf. Jamie’s a fighter.”

“Yes,” Sam said dryly. “I can attest to that.”

“And so can them rowdy boys who picked on him in town,” Swede said, his eyes sparkling. He chuckled. “I would have very much liked to have seen that.”

“It was brutal,” Sam said. “And frightening in a way. The boy fights with a coldness that is scary. And he is very skillful.”

“I’ll tell you what he is now,” Hannah said, and they looked at her. “In love!”

Six

Four people taught at the local school: Reverend Callaway, his wife, Elizabeth, Abe Caney’s wife, Mary, and Sarah Montgomery. The community had tried to hire a full-time teacher, but so far had no luck in doing so. That summer Sarah tutored Jamie at home, in preparation for the next term. She found him to be exceptionally bright and to be a voracious reader. Whenever he had a spare moment, he had his nose stuck in a book.

News from town was not good. The Saxon brothers had broken out of jail . . . with some outside help, and nearly everyone thought they knew who had helped them: Hart Olmstead and John Jackson. But nobody could prove it.

Hart Olmstead had forbidden his daughter, Kate, from ever again going out to the Montgomery’s. He had given the child a terrible beating when she mentioned Jamie’s name one evening at the supper table.

Robert Jefferson told Jamie about Kate’s beating one day in town and the boy’s thoughts turned dark and savage, but no one knew it except Jamie. Like the Indians who had taken him, Jamie had mastered well the art of facial stoicism.

“Did he hurt her bad?” Jamie asked.

“He marked her some,” Robert told him, as the boys sat on the ground and played mumbly-peg with their knives.

Jamie still carried his Shawnee skinning knife, but he carried it out of sight, tucked into his high-topped moccasins. He did so without Sam having to ask. He wanted to do everything he possibly could to make life easier for the couple who were so kind to take him in. But there was one thing he refused to do: wear shoes. And Sam and Sarah had stopped asking him to. During his formative years, from seven to nearly twelve years of age, he had not had a shoe on either foot, so his feet just weren’t comfortable in anything except moccasins.

“How bad?”

“Not too bad, ’way I heared it. Heard it.” Since school was about to start, he had begun to watch his grammar. Getting rapped on the knuckles or a twisted ear hurt. “He was careful not to mark her on the face. He beat her back and backside with a belt. She had to stay abed for several days.”

The boys were silent for a time. Robert looked at Jamie. “You got a funny look in your eyes, Jamie.”

The look vanished instantly. Jamie smiled. “Just thinking, that’s all.”

“You anxious for school to start?”

“Yeah. I really am.”

* * *

School on the frontier was primitive at best. The buildings were ill-heated in the winter and insufferably hot in the summer. If a child got four full months of schooling a year, that was considered good. And those four months almost always were in the dead of winter, when his or her parents did not need them to work in the fields, plowing, planting, harvesting, mending fences, chasing down strayed cattle or hogs, or hunting for food or gathering berries.

But Jamie cherished every moment in school, for he was fully aware that he was far behind the others his age. However, there was also another reason why Jamie loved school: he got to sit next to Kate Olmstead.

During his first year of his stay at the home of Sam and Sarah Montgomery, Jubal Olmstead, Abel Jackson, and the few others who called them friends pretty much left Jamie alone. But Jamie knew it wouldn’t last and he was careful not to get caught out alone. It wasn’t that he was afraid, for he was not. He just didn’t want to cause trouble for Sam and Sarah.

Jamie was growing fast and filling out. Already big for his age, he was going to be a tall man, wide shouldered, lean hipped, and heavily muscled. Already he could more than hold his own with Sam in the fields, but he always held back, so as not to embarrass Sam.

Sam had presented Jamie with a fine Kentucky horse, a midnight-black stallion named Lightning that he’d bought for no more than a song because no one could ride the animal.

“If you can ride him, you can have him, Jamie.”

“I’ll ride him, sir.”

“Just keep him away from the other horses. This one’s a bad one.”

“He’s just misunderstood, sir. That’s all. Believe me, I know the feeling.”

Jamie gently broke the horse, constantly talking to him and not even attempting to ride the stallion for weeks, until the animal became used to Jamie’s touch and voice. Sam and Sarah watched him work and both knew the boy had an almost unnatural ability to handle animals.

“Eerie,” Sarah called it.

Sam agreed.

The big black had tried numerous times to bite and kick Sam, but never with Jamie.

Jamie turned out to be a fine horseman, taking to the saddle as if born to it. He could be seen often on the road into town, riding in to fetch something for Sarah. He carried a short-barreled rifle in a saddle boot — a cut-down version of a Kentucky rifle — and kept his pistol in a saddlebag. The carrying of weapons caused no head to turn, for brigands prowled the roads and dark paths of the timber, and Indian attacks were still occurring, although the latter were slowly tapering off as the various tribes were killed off, pushed westward, or breaking apart and attempting to assimilate into white society.

Jamie had heard that Tall Bull’s band had left the country and gone west. Where in the west no one seemed to know. But Jamie had not forgotten Deer Woman’s dire prediction: “Someday Tall Bull and Little Wolf will find you. That will be the day when you must decide whether you live or die. And whether you will, or can, kill your father and brother.”

Deer Woman might have had some doubts as to whether Jamie could kill in defense of his life or loved one. Jamie had no doubts at all.

Since the day of that terrible fight in the road that passed in front of Sam and Sarah’s land, Hart Olmstead had spoken not one word to Sam, Sarah, or Jamie. John Jackson spoke, but it was forced, and never more than a very terse greeting or farewell. Hart and his boys had stopped attending Reverend Callaway’s church. Kate and her mother still came to Sunday services, and to the occasional singin’ and eatin’ on the grounds, and Kate was rapidly turning into quite the young woman, beginning to fill out in all the right places and turning heads whenever she entered a building. But she had eyes only for Jamie.

Hart Olmstead had once again stated his objection to Jamie and forbidden his only daughter to see the boy. But Kate paid no attention to the warning and managed to see Jamie whenever he came to town, if only at a distance or to exchange a few words in Abe’s General Store.